The Mystery of the Kidnapped Whale - Marc Brandel [19]
“Beats me,” Pete admitted. “Wow! Look at that!”
Fluke was racing around and around the pool while Constance rode lightly stretched out on his back with her arms around him.
For the next half hour the three boys watched Constance and the little whale play together. It looked like play, but Bob knew it was really work. She was training Fluke, not so much to obey commands as to know from her slightest gesture, the expression on her face, what she wanted him to do and to respond to her immediately.
They were like close friends, Pete thought. So close they seemed to be able to read each other’s minds and share the same impulses, think and move together as one person.
After Constance had fed Fluke, she suggested the Three Investigators join her in the pool so that Fluke could get used to them and be friendly with them too.
It was a little scary at first, Pete found as he swam beside Fluke and felt the whale nudging playfully against him. Fluke seemed so big, so solid and powerful. But he was so gentle too. It wasn’t long before all three boys felt thoroughly at home with him.
“You’re doing fine,” Constance congratulated them as they climbed out of the pool. “Now let’s try that recorder.”
Fluke was floating at the other end of the pool. By now Constance had taught him to stay there and wait until she called him.
She took the metal box and switched it on to Record. Then, after fastening a weighted belt around her waist, she dived to the bottom of the pool.
After a second Fluke dived too and stayed at his end, lying flat on the bottom.
The Three Investigators watched Constance, fascinated. It was incredible how long she could stay underwater, Jupe thought. She was resting there as comfortably as Aunt Mathilda in her living room. Pete could see that as she held the recorder out in front of her, she was snapping the fingers of her other hand.
She stopped. She was smiling, cocking her head to one side.
After what seemed a long time but was probably no more than two minutes, she swam to the surface and took a deep, controlled breath.
“I think I got it,” she said. “Let’s see what it sounds like.”
Jupe wound back the tape and switched the recorder to Play.
There was no sound from the speaker at first, except for a gentle rippling. Then the three boys heard a quick clicking sound. That was Constance, Pete realized, snapping her fingers underwater.
The snapping stopped, then quite clearly over the speaker came a birdlike chirping. It rose and fell, the pitch constantly changing, and was accompanied, the way a Spanish song might be accompanied by castanets, by a sharp clacking sound.
It wasn’t exactly like a bird, Jupe thought. It was too deep-throated, too vibrant. It was – it was like nothing he had ever heard before.
It ended after a minute, and Constance turned off the recorder.
“That was Fluke?” Bob asked in an awed whisper. “That was Fluke singing to you?”
“Singing. Talking. Whatever you want to call it,” Constance told him. “All whales communicate with one another by sound. And of course sound carries a long way under water. We’ve never been able to learn or understand their language, but if we did we’d probably find it’s as meaningful and complicated as ours is.”
She paused, taking off her flippers.
“Except I don’t think they ever quarrel with one another,” she went on. “Just as they never fight. They’re much too civilized. And I’m sure they never lie to one another either, the way we do. They’ve got too much sense. After all, what’s the point of having a language if you use it to twist things instead of to say what you mean?”
“Could we hear it again?” Pete asked.
“In a moment. First I want Fluke to hear it.”
Jupe wound back the tape and switched to Play. Then Constance knelt down and held the metal box under the water. The Three Investigators watched Fluke.
He was still lying restfully on the bottom of the pool. His body suddenly seemed to quiver. His flippers straightened away from his sides. Then, in a single powerful movement,